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If the jerseys at Broncos camp didn’t have numbers, the truth is you might not even have noticed Russell Wilson was out on the practice fields. On this August morning, the fans aren’t around either—just the players and the coaches—and the efficiency and length of the session are the show, instead of how any individual star might shine or some story line could unfold.
It’s all in stark contrast to what was going on here in the south suburbs of Denver last summer. Every bit of that difference is by design.
This is Sean Payton’s camp.
The day Payton was hired, he was asked about Wilson’s having his own staff working out of the practice facility. The new coach responded that the idea was “foreign” to him and added it was “not gonna take place here” anymore. It sounded hard and harsh, but the reality is it was in accordance with the implicit mandate of the job he took—not just to cure the ills of 2022, but, really, fix all that’s gone awry since Peyton Manning retired after Super Bowl 50.
And while it sure wasn’t the last time Payton would say something that risked rubbing someone the wrong way (of course), the coach’s year off from the sideline gave him plenty of time to think about how he’d do this. So none of what’s happening now is by mistake.
Not the fact that every player on the roster is wearing protective Guardian Caps at practice—even beyond just players required to (linemen, tight ends, running backs and linebackers). Not that practices go well past two hours. Not that this session wrapped with sets of gassers, the sort of conditioning you see less and less of in the NFL’s summer these days. And certainly not that the hype on Wilson, and all the bells and whistles that came with it, is effectively gone.
A reset, recharged Payton may be returning to the NFL, different in some ways. An extended chance to step away and see a bigger picture will do that to a person. But signs and signals are everywhere here that the big stuff, the foundation off which he’ll build, is largely the same.
“I’m getting back to the thing where, man, our early part of the schedule is going to be important,” Payton said, leaning into a table in the Denver lunchroom after practice. “I go back to New Orleans in ’06, my first year with the program, this is a 3–13 team that had trouble. They were displaced because of Katrina, they were moved to San Antonio, and, because of that, we had a training camp for six and a half weeks in Jackson. We had to play our preseason games on the road. So just a long training camp.
“Man, I didn’t know what that team was going to be like. But Week 1 we beat Cleveland on the road. Then we had a huge win. We came back and beat Green Bay, down 13. And then opened at home in Atlanta, and the next thing we know, it’s 3–0. And confidence is born with these teams that have demonstrated ability. I think that’s important for our team now.”
Payton romanticizes that oppressive summer of ’06 in Mississippi for a reason. It set the standard for a decade and a half to follow. Results followed for the coach and his Saints.
Likewise, here, the work has come first. History tells him the rest will take care of itself.
